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Sri Lanka’s president has accused a former top Norwegian envoy of covertly financing the island’s separatist Tamil Tigers during peace talks before a military campaign that crushed the rebels in 2009. |
President Mahinda Rajapakse told a public rally on Saturday that he wanted Oslo to probe the role of Erik Solheim, a former Norwegian international development minister and a peace envoy to Sri Lanka.
“The Norwegian government should investigate his conduct,” Rajapakse said.
Solheim hit back yesterday, accusing Rajapakse of inventing the allegations as he enters campaign mode for a presidential election widely expected in January.
“President Rajapakse tells lies about me as election approaches. I will set the truth straight tomorrow,” Solheim said in a tweet, before telling AFP he would give a more detailed response today.
Solheim failed to secure a peace deal despite arranging a truce which broke down in April 2006. Three years later Sri Lankan forces crushed the campaign for a separate homeland in a controversial military campaign.
Rajapakse in his address, a copy of which was obtained from his office yesterday, said Solheim gave money to the guerrillas even while peace moves were under way.
Solheim, who led Norwegian peace efforts between 1999 and 2006, recently announced his willingness to give evidence before any international tribunal investigating Sri Lanka’s war record.
Sri Lanka crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by May 2009 in a massive military operation that also triggered allegations that troops killed up to 40,000 Tamil civilians, a charge
Colombo denies.
“Solheim told me that our forces will never be able to defeat the LTTE. He said (leader Velupillai) Prabhakaran is a very, very clear man. A military genius,” Rajapakse said.
“Today Solheim is trying to jump up and give evidence against us. We have evidence of him giving money to the LTTE. We are ready to share that
evidence.”
In June Solheim said atrocities were committed in the final months of the war, including the shelling of hospitals in the battle zone and the execution of
surrendering rebels.
The UN Human Rights Council in March voted in favour of setting up an international probe into Sri Lanka’s war record.
Sri Lanka invited Norway to broker peace in December 1999. But a ceasefire arranged by Oslo was scrapped after Tamil Tigers tried to assassinate the then-army chief Sarath Fonseka in April 2006.
